Rupert Murdoch is in talks with Microsoft over his plans to delist his newspaper websites from Google.
Of course, if he was serious about this, he could get his techies to add a robots.txt file to all News Corp sites and effectively disappear from Google immediately.
But he needs to keep an audience or he'll lose advertising …

They deserve each other.

Read all about it! Dinosaur bytes back!

I can appreciate looking around for a viable business model but puh-leez can we have some originality?

The google-wikipedia model is nice and free and I'd guess that any paid up versions of each are not really going to be as good as what exists at the moment.

But that is the trouble of introducing dinosaur mentality into a mammalian world?

Where dinosaurs want to eat it or breed with it, mammals just want to have fun?

And besides, ought M n MS come up with a better business model?

(Ans: of course they should!)

Both can thrown sufficient reserve at a solution-of-sorts to make it workable as long as that reserve is unreserved and as soon as the reserve becomes reserved again the solution-of-sorts becomes a no longer required indulgence.

A decider seems to be:

what sort of community do you want?

A business community that offers inferior service at all levels and charges abysmally for doing so?

Or a free community that offers superior service, swifter and with a scope that the business community can only dream about?

Silly man.

Hypocrites.

He claims that Google is stealing his content by linking to his sites, then the Times steals Edgar Wright's tribute to Edward Woodward from his website and edits it to lose the affection and admiration the original had.

just wandering... is this legel?!

they way I see it, they have no problem with being listed by the search engine. They just want one search engine to list them while blocking the other search engine. Isn't this the same as saying that shop A may sale your product but shop B is not allowed to sale?

If they don't want to appear in search engine results, then it is fine. But if they are selective about which search engine can list them and which can't, there have be some anti-competitive law against this.

Tim

This is fantastic news. I wonder how long it will last until The Sun et al silently appear back on google. Mr Murdoch's comments remind me of a certain US senator and his famous "series of tubes" remarks.

This isn't the video game industry

While MS could afford to pay to get devs to move over to the Xbox 360 than develop for the PS3, there are just so many news sources out there that Google wouldn't be affected by the loss of News Corp sites.

While Sony and the PS3 has suffered big time from MS buying games for the 360 and taking content away from Sony, there's just too much content out there for Google to be affected.

For News Corp though you can see the benefit, especially if MS' payments would offset their losses. But it would do nothing to hurt Google, which is MS' main intention of course.

Well if that's OK, then

Well if it's ok for NewCorp sites not be in Google, Google, should preemptively offer non New Corp sites in its search results to ween people off Murdoch.

Go for it.

Sky has to give away its news channel as a free item, and even then Murdoch's lot are busy attacking the Beeb because they say they can't compete. The Internet is even worse for competition, there are plenty of source for the real stories, so he has nothing special on offer. Nothing unique.

You must be joking

"But if Murdoch thinks Google is playing hardball with his precious content, we'd love to see him haggling with Steve Ballmer."

C'mon, MS and Ballmer will pay Murdoch to help MS beat Google. That is how it will start out. If it doesn't crash and burn and actually succeeds in making Bing successful, Murdoch will be rewarded with a knife set...in his back.

Bluster from the world's greatest blusterer

Murdoch knows fine well that removing his content from Google's index will just result in more traffic for his competitors. He may be happy with that scenario for any number of nefarious reasons, but he knows fine well that it doesn't lead to people paying for his stuff.

There was an interesting Orlowski take on this story last week but unfortunately comments were not enabled for it, presumably so as not to sully its perfection with the uncultured ideas of the masses.

"the Aussie billionaire"

Digital arsewipe

The idea that people will run off to Bing just because they can get a fix of the Stun is pure fantasy - as improbable as the idea that the X-factor classes will pay for Ruperts sites, and after all a website doesn't double as arsewipe for the 13 days between dole cheques. The way of the internet is that you stick to what you know, and when something on the sites you know disappears, 9 times out of 10 you just carry on and forget it was ever there in a few weeks.

Then there's syndication to other papers. A few years ago the Independent started charging for some content, divided up into sections. I was out of the country and used to read Robert Fisk's Middle East stuff on the site. I thought about stumping up the 30 quid for the Fisk only sub, but changed my mind when I realised that the articles were being syndicated to papers in just about every country on the planet, and thence onto their websites and available through Google. I can't imagine Rupe's boys will be missing a trick by syndicating their stuff (no doubt without handing a share over to the journos), and I doubt those papers will be adding a "Ruperts content only" google exclusion to their robots.txt.

Murdoch is not so stupid he'll have missed all this, so I can only assume he reckons he can arm twist some cash out of Google for the stuff he can't get his readership to pay for online (the Wall Street Journal readers won't be footing their own bills, I'm sure, so they are a case apart). Nice money if you can get it, but with a shitload of other more desperate media out there, I doubt they'll play lest they set a precedent

Rupert isn't usually one to associate himself with failure. But if you're going to go for it late in life, you may as well do it big, and Bing! certainly is Fail on an epic scale.

Who cares?

I already don't use Google and The Times (which can be quoted in a court of law) is now so riddled with Israel-centric op-eds that it's barely worth bothering with. I hardly read it online, I certainly wouldn't pay for it on paper.

This is the problem with these media-mogul numpties - they end up going mad and becoming power crazed dictators who think themselves the gatekeepers of acceptable fact. Well Mr. Murdoch, in the unlikely event you or anyone you know reads this - your newspapers are a joke. They tell lies, twist fact, offer petty, mindless op-ed pieces and are blatantly biased towards Conservative/pro-Israel/anti-democratic fascism. You took a paper with a reputation and turned it into a propaganda rag for the super elite and wealthy. The online version is only redeemed by the ability for readers to post their own remarks and a brief examination of said posts will show you how far off beam most of your article writers are.

And nothing of value was lost

@nobby

"So, robots.txt can tell a search engine that they _shouldn't_ index certain content. But it doesn't stop someone from actually indexing it does it?"

Yes, robots.txt doesn't do this all by itself. But sane spider programmers will have their web-crawling arachnids look at robots.txt and obey the directives therein because the databases they compile can be deliberately poisoned if they don't.

Those who don't are very likely to get their spiders cast into an infinite tarpit which generates HTML pages littered with random email addresses generated in order to lure spammer traffic directly into a spamtrap. This is done quite deliberately in order to enable spammers to get their spambots blacklisted, and also so that tarpit operators can have the owners of the IP addresses used by their bots prosecuted in countries where evidence obtained by these means can be used in spammer prosecutions. For details of one such approach see:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/

A tarpit can also be designed to require minimal resource use on the server while maximising resource use on clients.

Note that tarpits don't rely on robots.txt to screen in badguys, but this is still an effective means to keep sane spider programmers from getting caught by these mechanisms, because sane spider programmers will leave robots.txt exclusion requests well alone.

Come on Google

Wouldn't it be delicious if Google took the old crook at his word and blocked all Newscorp sites, not just from the news but from web searches as well. (They could justify it along the lines of "... it's harmful to your mental health ...", etc.) Then when the amoral creep starts squealing to get his hits back, Google removes the blocks - for a fee!

Anyone

Looked at these web sites he wants to charge for? think there still 1.0. Sorry Mr Dinosaur do the world a favour and sell up and retire, the morons that brought your paper have moved to MySpace/Facebook/Twitter for there daily drivel (saying that he does own MySpace but again can't work out a good money making business model).

Murdoch's Republican Party vs Google

I think the way Murdoch will play this, isn't by trying to get Microsoft to pay them for traffic, look elsewhere: Murdochs Teabag Republican faction.

They are a radical extreme wing of the Republican party, promoted by Murdoch's Fox TV in the USA. The speakers interviewed as representing the Republican party are chosen by Fox not the GOP. They employ the Republicans as commentators, just as long as they're extreme enough (Oliver North et al) . And reporters even sponsor Teabag rallys, fake up stories to make them seem bigger and in control of the Republican party.

When they kicked out the chosen GOP republican candidate, they signalled they were in control of the Republican party:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/nyregion/01upstate.html

So now you see that if Murdoch comes to dominate US right wing politics, then he can attack Google by laws and political means.

Because nobody in their right mind would pay him for something that's free elsewhere without some coercion.

legal footshot

In normal times if Google pre-emptively delisted Murdoch's empire the lawsuits would start flying quicker than Ballmer can throw a chair... Murdoch just immunised Google, dump him now and his own statements are their defence, assuming the court stops laughing long enough to let a case even start!

Doubt it will happen, I'm convinced Google simply dont care about this market and will just wait for Murdoch to commit commercial suicide by himself. The idiot will try the courts and end up ordered to use the robots file, Google just won't play the game.

Does any government have balls

jubtastic1 is bang on.

How on earth is a company allowed to use profits from a monopoly in one area to attack perfectly legitimate businesses in a completely different area? Sure the Monopolies and Mergers Commission should be going around to Wapping and slapping Murdoch about.

That's if they had any balls.

Of course, if they did take it to court then MS would just send it off to the courts for a few decades - they learnt long ago that a law system full of selfish lawyers is glacial compared to the tech markets.

(BTW - Sony have performed a miracle in being able to compete with a 'competitor' who has been able to flush away - what is it so far - about 6 BILLION dollars).

@ Andrew Halliwell

Murdoch? Bing?

desperate

it seems this neocon cunts getting desperate if hes thinking going into partnership with microsoft who are just as ruthless in negotiating business terms. its be interesting to see who gets the better of the other if this deal does go ahead

i only care for the sports columns of hugh mcilvanney and not the far right israel propaganda that most of his outlets spew so it wont be much of a loss though as hugh himself seems to focus more on covering horse racing nowadays anyway

the icing on the cake would be for his empire to collapse around him while hes living his wretched life

What's So Hard About Being a Newspaper

Either you're making positive revenues from your website (presumably by selling ads) or you're not.

And if you're not giving your print version away for free, why give the online one away? The Wall Street Journal has the right model. People recognize that the news is valuable, but everybody thinks the web has to be free. It doesn't.

Printing costs

It has long been a stated "fact" by the newspaper business that the news stand price of a rag covers the printing and distribution costs and that the content and profits are paid via advertising revenue.

So, given that the internet provides publishers with the opportunity to publish their content at a tiny fraction of the cost of printing on dead trees then how is it that they are unable to function profitably in this brave new digital world?

The answer, of course, is competition. Physical printing and distribution is expensive and provides a natural barrier to entry for any budding competitors in the newsrag industry. This means that the (very few) existing publishers have basically a monopoly on the market and therefore don't have to compete. This leaves them free to push pap and propaganda at their customer base without fear that those customers will be able to go elsewhere for their <ahem> "information"

This is where the Internet steps in. Now every man and his lolcat has the ability to publish and distribute the "news" as they see it and people have a wide choice of where to go to read about things that are happening in the world. Unfortunately for Murdoch et al, this means that people can choose to avoid paying for newspapers and thereby keeping his propaganda empire afloat.

Boo hoo Rupert. If you were offering people something of value they would buy it. Clearly you are not and you are destined to fail.

I say we just call his bluff

Can we make a firefox add-in to just remove newscorp sites from results anyway?

You just need to add "-site:fox.com -site:americanidol.com ... <etc>" at the end of every google search query. The list of sites could be pulled from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation with a quick scrape for URLs and then, Hey Presto! No more Murdoch!

I'm actually thinking of doing it just to eliminate the amount of garbage i see on the net from murdoch and co.

Control Words.. Control Views ... Control Worlds, All make IMPerfect Idiots of the Power Crazy

An Independent Voice with no Earthly Axe to Grind, for there are always Hosts of Crack Hacks to Find and Defend Vulnerable Systems against their Very Own Systemic Flaws being used by Virtually Invisible and Practically Remote Third Parties as Executive Live Active Direct Features in an Artificially Created Environment/Spinning Landscape.

Quite Mad in a Senile Sort of Way

amanfrommars wrote:

Tuesday, 24 November 2009 at 05:40 am (UTC)

It is a quite perverse and decidedly subversive novel concept* ..... to expect the masses to pay for their own brainwashing with selective, subjective third party megalomaniacal content ...... which is nothing more than Premium Sub Prime Toxic Waste at its Best, surely, and that is no good to anyone except the Peddlers.

The Smarter Media Mogul and Phish Merchant would always Provide Better Content which does the Job Better in an Attractive Engaging Beta for Free ...... but that does require a Prime Connection with a more Advanced Intelligence than that possessed and displayed by Messrs Billy Boy Gates and Gold Digger Murdoch ........ The First Dinosaur Business Victims of the Virtualisation Age.

I suppose now we can expect a few tantrums, with some toys being thrown out of their prams, would be another way of looking at the likely path of the sorry development.

* In a Penny Trash Comic Book Style rather than Genre Masterpiece Magical Classic.

2 th e MeN frm Mars (or is it m'arse?)

In its analysis it counts information on the web as a new factor well managed by Obama's team. It is also out of Republican Party control or direct/indirect influence.

One action point arising is for a media mogul to reign in, take control and manage online information streams (just like what most repressive governments seek to do?) hence ... returning control of information streams to Republican Party in the land of the brave, land of the free, land of the free and brave ...

Because, as we all know, whomsoever controlleth information to the masses influenceth said opinions of the masses no?

[ok, admitted it is a conspiracy theory but until M n MS motivating factors are made public it seems reasonable to speculate yes?]

another funny

Just reading a story on Sky News website (linked from Google News fyi murdoch) - hilariously, they have a satellite image of the flood affected areas with a disclaimer "Google Maps Image".... so I guess it's alright for Sky to use Google services, but not alright for Google to use theirs... hey ho.